I took a ruler and measured it, and all the plates were the same size, all of them were 18 cm in diameter, which belonged to the large plates.

Oh, or maybe it's a bowl, because the depth of these plates is somewhere between a plate and a bowl in the modern concept.

The bowl is basically intact, and this is all thanks to the large urn with a broken mouth: the shape is huge, and it looks very strong! How to look like the best container for packaging small porcelain bowls with uniform specifications.

"It is estimated that such a big guy will be sold at a good price when he goes abroad, and the gang of people in the Tongguan kiln in the Tang Dynasty will burn such a big urn, talent!"

Xiang Weirong has time to study porcelain, if even the packaging can help customers think about how to solve it, what is it if it is not a talent?

Nowadays, when buying porcelain, we pay attention to cardboard boxes and wooden boxes, but in ancient times, we can't say whether cardboard boxes are available, and crates can definitely not be sold for money.

The packaging is sold for money, talented!

Hearing his brother-in-law's words, Zhang Nan, who was checking the porcelain bowl, shook his head, took a closer look at the big urn that was a little broken, and said, "Brother-in-law, this big guy is not from the Tongguan kiln, it should be from the Guanchong kiln in Guangdong Province." The porcelain bowls are stacked one by one, put them in a circle, and then stuff tea leaves into them, completely plug the gap between these plates and the large urn, and then seal them with lids.

The space can be used to the maximum, and the porcelain can be completely isolated from the moisture of the sea when transported.

When we arrived at the destination, a shipload of things was full of goods, and there was nothing that was not valuable. ”

Xiang Weirong did not doubt his brother-in-law's judgment of the kiln, and he always thought that Zhang Nan was an expert among experts!

In fact, Zhang Nan didn't even know what the porcelain from the Guanchong kiln in Guangdong Province should look like, but it would have been able to affirm: the wreck not far from the bottom of the sea should be the famous "Blackstone"!

Can the name of the Tang Dynasty shipwreck survive?

Or is it recorded in history?

No, of course not!

Isn't there a big black reef nearby, so it is called the "Black Market", which is different from the "Taixing" that sank only 168 years ago: the "Taixing" ran into the reef and sank, and the British opium ship that rescued it was known from more than 180 survivors, and there are detailed records.

Guan Xingquan is a native of Jiaojiang, and he understands the sea quite well, and he also knows a little bit about shipping.

As soon as the map was opened in my mind, the kiln was long, and this porcelain plate was probably transported to Guangdong Province by water, and then it was on the ocean-going ship.

"From the vicinity of Yangcheng, it is most convenient to take the Southeast Asian route from a geographical point of view. ”

Zhang Nan nodded to Brother Guan's words, "Whether it is to Southeast Asia, or to detour from Malacca to West Asia and North Africa, these sailing ships more than a thousand years ago will generally go to the coast of Guangdong Province for supplies."

According to records, the Tang Dynasty attached great importance to foreign trade, and the route from Guangdong Province was the longest ocean route from China to India, Arabia and even the east coast of Africa at that time.

Especially after the Middle Tang Dynasty, the Tang Dynasty lost control of the Western Regions, the Northwest Land Silk Road was reimbursed, and shipping became more important.

In the Tang Dynasty, Yangcheng was the absolute largest port in the entire East.

Even if the shipwreck below is a porcelain received in other places, or simply a navigator of the Tang Dynasty led the river directly to Tongguan Kiln to load goods, when returning, the ancient Yangcheng Port is also a must stop on its return journey.

Yangcheng was originally one of the most important foreign ports in the Tang Dynasty, except for the ships going to the Korean Peninsula and the little devils, other ships of maritime trade generally regarded Yangcheng as the last supply port and packing place in China, and waited for the winter monsoon in Yangcheng.

In Yangcheng, in addition to replenishing some food and fresh water needed by the ocean, the sailing ship also has an important task of packaging porcelain.

As for tea, it is estimated that Lingnan was also a tea-producing area at the beginning, and with these six-series large urns, everything is ready. ”

The big urn is good, loading, loading water and grain, everything is solved, what does the kiln in Yangcheng burn if you don't burn this thing?

Vita-Bruno and the others also planned to continue to enter the water, and Zhang Nan asked them to move another big urn up, and by the way, they would find a way to get all the porcelain exposed to the seabed.

Deliberately, if the surface treatment is clean, there is no need to rush to salvage, and you can wait for the "Taixing" a few nautical miles away to clean up.

Now there is no need for a transport boat, and the "Sunshine Star" is slowly moving a place under the command of Captain Philip to facilitate the divers' salvage: directly put down a semi-rigid frame net, the divers load things in, and the sailors on it can pull up.

Xiang Weirong helped to sort out the porcelain bowls, washed and dried them and put them in the big storage box: the plates of the Tongguan kiln in the Tang Dynasty are a bit old-fashioned from the perspective of modern people, but as long as they add the history of more than 1,000 years, they are still very tasteful.

"How much would such a plate be worth?"

Xiang Weirong asked casually.

"Huaxia?"

"Virtue, abroad. ”

To his brother-in-law, Xiang Weirong doesn't have to be too polite: how much can this domestic antique porcelain sell?

Even if you only know a little about antique porcelain Xiang Weirong, you can see that you can't sell these plates at a sky-high price like in Xiangjiang.

Zhang Nan smiled and said: "If there are only these dozens of them, all of them will be sold within 5 years, and it will be no problem to auction one for 10,000 US dollars, and at most a few will be sold together." ”

Speaking of this, he looked at the sea outside the ship, and said, "If there is a shipload of tens of thousands down there, three or five hundred dollars will kill each one." ”

There is no way, the price of Tongguan kiln products in the Western market is not low, but they are very few intact products unearthed in China. However, although Hailao porcelain generally does not appear in the top quality, it is all export porcelain, but generally once it appears, the price of one of the types of porcelain will be suppressed!

That's too much!

When Xiang Weirong heard this, he said, "it!"

Zhang Nan nodded, "Well, it's-and-." ”

This will divers prepare to go to the sea, and even Guan Xingquan has changed into diving equipment: he is not sure about the water depth of 30 meters, 15 meters, swimming in a large reservoir, he can dive so deep without diving equipment, and it is not that he has never done it.

As for water-based......

Boss Guan grew up by the sea, and he is a cow.

As for Zhang Nan.

5 meters is OK, 10 meters don't dare to go down, 15 meters is not even to think about it, and you won't go down to see the scenery if you die.

"I'll just wait, and when the time comes, someone will go down with an underwater camera, and I'll just look at it from above. ”

Not far away, the "Big Shark" has the same equipment, and the divers are equipped not only with thin recreational wetsuits, but also with professional shallow water equipment for working on the seabed.

It's the kind of clothes that are a little bloated, wearing leaded diving shoes on the body, and wearing a large copper helmet with a mask like an astronaut on his head.

It's good, it doesn't use oxygen cylinders, it breathes directly through the snorkel, it can work for a long time on the seabed, and it can also receive instructions and feedback from the operation ship through the intercom.

However, it is necessary to use tools such as diving ropes to enter and exit the water, and it is best to cooperate with divers wearing diving equipment in other situations nearby.

Baskets and baskets of porcelain came out of the water, and after an hour of busyness, the surface of the seabed was emptied.

Guan Xingquan, who came out of the water, told Zhang Nan that the "scars" left by the big urn were filled with seabed silt cut from afar.

With that large piece of reef as a reference, Captain Philip and both have accurate the location of the wreck point to the unit of "meters", and the next time you come to anchor directly, you will definitely not find a place.

The sun deck is tucked away lest there be Indonesian monkey fishing boats approaching to see something you shouldn't see.

There were three large urns piled up on the deck, as well as nearly a hundred pieces of intact or broken porcelain, some of which Zhang Nan took a good look at, and he was not even afraid of heat.

Bare, he wore a pair of swimming trunks, and Cuenca erected the awning on the sun deck so that the boss would not peel off the skin.

The two large urns that were newly fished up were intact, and the inside was the same as the previous one, which was still a plate from the Tongguan kiln.

When I took it all out, I found that although the mouth of the kiln was the same, only one of the urns contained a plate with a bird pattern painted on it.

The porcelain in the other urn is a little different, only about 14 centimeters in diameter, and the shape is a little deeper, which can no longer be said to be a plate, but a bowl.

The pattern inside is no longer a single bird with dots, but a beautiful flower and grass pattern, mountain peak pattern, romantic cloud pattern, only 5 bird patterns are drawn, and the choice of graphics seems to be more casual than a larger model of plate.

More than 1,000 years of underwater years have not ruined the porcelain from the Tang Dynasty, the color is still moist and clear, and among the hundreds of bowls, the bottom plate is stored in about 30, and the decoration in the bowl is still a little weird.

Where's the blame?

Randy and Paul watched as the boss studied the bowls with strange lines drawn, and the more they looked at them, the more they felt that they had seen them somewhere.

In the end, Paul thought about it first, and said to Zhang Nan: "Boss, this seems to be the style of Alaba, I seem to have seen it, they knocked the same lines on the bronze."

I have a whole plate of handicrafts brought back from the Middle East at home, and the lines on the top are similar to these. ”

At this point, Randy also had a "no wonder it looks familiar" expression on his face: this is also the Lord who has spent some time in the Arab world.

What does it mean to be well-informed?

Paul is a guy who has traveled more than half the world.

Zhang Nan heard his bodyguard say this and asked, "What do you mean by knowing the lines on your plate?"

Paul's mouth tilted and he said embarrassedly: "I don't know, boss, at that time, how could we have the heart to figure out this, so we couldn't drink even if we complained." ”

Zhang Nan laughed.

After laughing, he said, "I haven't seen your plate, and I don't know what it means."

However, the lines in these bowls are not simply lines and paintings, but are actually a variant of the ancient Aral-Bowen text, which has a classic meaning, and the text is to the effect of 'All-Allah-Great'.

If nothing else, this ship is a cargo ship that does the business of Ara-Bob and travels to the Middle East.

Maybe the shipwreck below is the Alabab ship, during the Tang Dynasty, the Chinese sea ships ran far away, but not many, selling the housing market, you can make a lot of money without risking going out to the ocean. ”

As he spoke, his fingers lightly tapped on the wall of the bowl, and said: "Very interesting, more than 1,000 years ago, Ala-Bowen appeared on the porcelain of an inland kiln in the Tang Dynasty of China.

I looked at the shape of those large plates a little awkwardly, saying that the plates were too deep, and that the bowls were a little shallower, I thought it was the request of the orderer, probably the Arabs at that time liked this.

Another very interesting one, I remember that there are statistics in the data, in Southeast Asia, the Middle East and East Africa in many countries have unearthed the green and yellow glazed porcelain bowls of Tongguan kilns.

However, in China, except for Chang-sha, where the kiln site is located, and Yangzhou, a major trading port where the products are sold overseas, there are more Tongguan kiln blue-glazed porcelain bowls unearthed, and there are almost no such porcelain in other places.

I estimate that the green and yellow glazed colored porcelain bowl of this copper official kiln is a kind of product for export. ”

patted Paul on the shoulder, "Just like the blue and white Dehua kiln in the Taixing on the side, it is exported to earn foreign exchange, and it is specially sold to you guys who can't make porcelain!"

All the American guys present have no opinion on this: not only because Zhang Nan is the boss and a very good boss, but also because what Zhang Nan said is a fact that many Europeans and Americans know.

The Arab aristocracy was able to use porcelain imported from China more than a thousand years ago, but the Europeans ......

Even the kings will have to wait hundreds of years!

It still has to be imported from China, the road is long and dangerous, not to mention the price is very expensive after shipping back to Europe!

Not to mention, three hundred years ago in Europe, there were no decent tableware on the dining table of the general public, and most of the clay bowls with unsatisfactory hygiene quality were used.

At that time, various epidemics and diseases were rampant in Europe, and many people thought that tableware was one of the reasons.

Although the aristocratic class could use silver cutlery, it was easy to oxidize and blacken, which seriously affected people's normal three meals a day: the appetite was inverted, and the servants had to spend a lot of time wiping the dishes.

At that time, the white porcelain tableware of Huaxia Bing Qing and extremely hygienic was transmitted to Europe, and the whole of Europe was poured over it, regarded it as "white gold".

From the emperor to the commoners, they are all pursuing porcelain from China.

At the beginning of the 18th century, Europe imported a large number of porcelain from China for export, and even led to financial constraints in many countries.

In fact, the imitation of Chinese porcelain existed much earlier, Marco Polo's diary recorded the existence of porcelain, and after returning to Europe, he also greatly publicized the benefits of porcelain, which boosted the enthusiasm of Europeans, especially the Medici family in Italy. It was copied in the 16th century, but it was soon stopped because of the cost of money, and only about 60 pieces have been handed down so far.

Later, the Netherlands, Britain, France, Prussia and other countries followed suit, opened kilns and built factories, and continued to imitate.

In order to obtain the secrets of Chinese porcelain production, European countries also continued to send spies to spy on the production of Chinese porcelain.

After two or three hundred years of succession, the Europeans succeeded.

The Chinese Tang Dynasty, the world civilization of the Arab is still good, and Europe is suffering in the early Middle Ages of the Dark Age, the boss said so, and the American guys have to admit it.

But there was a question, an objection from the empty Captain Philip, or a question about a situation that clearly did not make sense: "Boss, if it's the Ara-Bob cargo ship down there, how did it get here?"

yes, that's a problem!

This is the waters of Belitung Island, and if this ship is going to the Middle East after departing from Huaxia, it should not be here!

Far from the Straits of Singapore and the Straits of Malacca, merchant ships were supposed to bypass present-day Singapore and then cross the Straits of Malacca, following the usual route of the Maritime Silk Road.

But the ship under the sea bed veered in a southeasterly direction for more than 300 nautical miles, which is unreasonable.

Is it lost, or is it blown off course by the wind and waves, or is it going to some port in the Java Sea?

In response to Mr. Captain's question, Zhang Nan gave a "common sense" explanation, and pointed to the cargo ship a few nautical miles away, "The Taixing sank to hide from pirates, and the one below may have been hijacked by pirates."

Pirates, there have been since ancient times, these porcelains are more expensive than gold, if it were me, I would rob it!"